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Guest Op-ed Grassley-Klobuchar Ushers in Dangerous Counterfeit Drugs

Congress
is poised to consider a bill that would allow Americans to import prescription
drugs from Canada. The bill’s authors — Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck
Grassley (R-IA) — label their effort as a bipartisan push to “help Americans
who struggle to pay exorbitant prices for medication.”

It’s
noble of lawmakers to tackle prescription drug costs. Eight in ten Americans
are concerned about the price of medicines, according to a Kaiser Family
Foundation survey.

But
the Grassley-Klobuchar bill isn’t the right solution. While it might deliver
some minor financial relief, it’ll jeopardize the health and wellbeing of
millions of Americans.

On
cost, the Grassley-Klobuchar would yield negligible savings at best. If the entire
nation legalized drug importation, number crunchers at the Department of Health
and Human Services predict that American drug spending would decrease by less
than 1 percent.

On
safety, the bill exposes Americans to dangerous counterfeits. It’s estimated
that 1 million people die at the hand of counterfeit drugs every year, many of
which come from Canada.

Last
year, U.S. prosecutors fined Canada’s largest online pharmacy $34 million for
selling counterfeit medications to unsuspecting Americans. The company earned a
$78 million profit by deceiving vulnerable cancer patients. Two widely sold
oncology drugs — Avastin and Altuzan — contained zero active pharmaceutical
ingredients.

Exacerbating
safety concerns is the fact that a startling number of the “Canadian” drugs
purchased by Americans aren’t actually from Canada.

An
FDA operation conducted at three major U.S. airports examining suspected
pharmaceutical shipments from India, Israel, Costa Rica, and Vanuatu revealed
that nearly half were ordered from “Canadian” pharmacies — and of those, just
15 percent actually originated in Canada. The rest came from one of 27
countries across the world, including India, Turkey, and Iran.

The
FDA warns Americans that it cannot ensure the safety of medicines “bought over
the Internet from foreign sources, from storefront businesses that offer to buy
foreign medicine for you, or during trips outside the United States.”

Neither,
for that matter, can our northern neighbor. Canadian authorities have
repeatedly stated that they’re not responsible for regulating the safety,
quality, or efficacy of medicines sold to U.S. citizens.

Americans
should not take the U.S. regulatory system for granted. Before obtaining FDA
approval, new drugs must undergo a rigorous testing process. It takes
approximately ten years, hundreds of pre-clinical treatments, and multiple
clinical trials to bring just one product to the market.

Unfortunately,
the same FDA oversight doesn’t apply to foreign pharmacies. And the
Grassley-Klobuchar bill fails to acknowledge the dangers of importation.

Lawmakers
are right to worry about how much patients spend at the pharmacy. But drug
importation is not the right way to lower costs. Congress needs to go back to
the drawing board.

Sally
C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at
the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is The False Promise of
Single-Payer Health Care (Encounter 2018). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes.